The first meeting of the Social Capital Study Group of San Antonio (sounds a little pretentious, but--oh, well!) will be at Community Unitarian Universalist Church (CUUC) on Sunday, 9/20 at 6:30 pm. This blog will summarize meetings and the QuickTopic discussion board for those not attending the CUUC meetings. I'll start off stating (1) what kind of "social capital" I'm talking about, and (2) what my objective is in starting this study group.
(1) Social capital is any economic benefit that results--for those receiving the benefit--primarily from their mutual participation in social relationships and communities.
(2) I would like to start, find, belong to, or participate in a community that intentionally creates social capital. In the past, many communities have created social capital abundantly, but did so unintentionally--or perhaps unconsciously. In modern society, it no longer appears that social capital can be grown unintentionally or unconsciously; it seems to require the intention to do so by a group of people for whom this is one of the explicit purposes of their association with each other.
Belonging to a social capital study group has a specific purpose for me: I would like to identify, exhaustively and precisely, the conditions under which a social capital-intensive community could create itself and function in the midst of a modern society that otherwise tends to discourage and dissipate the conditions under which social capital has been formed in the past.
Co-housing communities stimulate social capital formation by designing physically proximate neighborhoods. The elders in Shyamalan's film "The Village" do it by severing contact with the modern world and forming a self-sustaining community in a remote woods. The Amish of Lancaster County, PA accomplish this through an elaborate cultural and religious separation from the society around them. Is the proximate housing necessary? Is physical isolation necessary? Is cultural separation necessary? My starting question is this: Can a coherent, cohesive, social capital-forming community be grown and sustained right in the midst of modern urban society?
If so, what are the conditions for it? Must it have a purpose and "vision" over and above the formation of social capital itself? How many members would it initially require? How closely would they need to share a common vision or set of values? How would they compensate for physical proximity, if they do not live in the same neighborhood? (I see this study group as a "think tank" for pursuing those questions, and not yet as the core group of such a community. It could become this, but that is not my intention for it.)
Please add your own questions to the list!
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So, suppose I get together with my buddies and we decide to mutually participate in a social relationship for our own economic benefit. The way it works is this. We each contribute some money and form a vehicle that we call a corporation to hold and invest the money, say in a fleet of ships that will make its way to the East Indies, buy spices, bring them home and sell them for a huge profit. We enter into this relationship with the intention of creating an economic benefit, but is it social capital?
ReplyDeleteNo, I would say not, Henry. You are alluding to the the classical historical case often cited as the beginning of modern capitalism, which involves the concentration of financial wealth in order to underwrite ventures that would be impossible for single individuals. The archetypal example of social capital is Amish barn raising. No individual farmer can build a barn easily by himself, but with the help of all the other members of his community, it goes up in a day or a weekend, with no exchange of money or expenditure of financial wealth (although I don't think social capital necessarily excludes monetary exchanges). By the way, you refer to the relationships in your corporation scenario as "social relationships," but what exactly makes them "social," would you say? There would probably be very little of what makes the Amish relationships "social." It's interesting that the Spanish term for corporation (S.A.) translates literally as "anonymous society," suggesting that personal relationships have little to do with what modern corporations are about.
ReplyDeleteHmm ... So what is it, do you think, that distinguishes Amish barn-raising practices from the Dutch East India Company? Or rather, what makes the former social capital and the latter not?
ReplyDeleteThe "social" part. Amish barn-raising practices are made possible by the fact that the members of the community are involved in each others' lives in every conceivable way. The stock holders of the East India company, on the other hand, probably participate in each others' personal lives in very few ways at all--outside the occasional Christmas party, if that. Of course, there may be the odd corporate board of directors that have very close personal relationships with each other, but this would the exception rather than the rule, and it would certainly not be a distinguishing characteristic.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about the Jamestown and Plymouth colonies, or, for that matter, the various Spanish expeditions of conquest in the New World? Have I got any others? Life on board a naval vessel or merchant ship? Small-town rural communities in the midwest? Devil's Island or Australian penal colonies?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what you're asking me here, Henry--that's quite a range of human social groupings. I guess I'd say that the seeds of social capital are always right there within human nature, so they will tend to spring up and flourish, in one way or another, wherever human beings must depend upon one another in a setting of relative equality. So we'd expect to find more of it in Plymouth, Jamestown, penal colonies and rural small-town communities, and less of it aboard ships and on expeditions of conquest, which have rigidly hierarchical command structures and social arrangements.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what I'm asking either. Just trying to get an idea of what this social capital thing is. Thus far, I've gotten the ideas that it arises in the context of social relations in which people are dependent on each other and in which there is relative equality. So, Dutch East India: interdependence, relative equality, but no social relations; Mayflower Colony: interdependence, social relations, equality of a sort, unless you count women. Jamestown Colony: far less equality and social relations only of necessity. Small rural towns: perhaps the best example. Perhaps weak on the interdependence business.
ReplyDeleteSo, where, besides the Amish does one find shining examples of social capital in action?
Robert Putnam, the American sociologist most closely associated with the study of social capital (from his first book on it, "Bowling Alone") wrote a second book, "Better Together," which is a series of 10 case studies of social capital in action. I'll bring the book with me Sunday. (Even if you won't be there Sunday, I'll bring it until I can give it to you.) I'm not personally aware of any "shining examples" of social capital in action, although of course our very own CUUC--and many other churches, as well--are probably the most common vestiges of social capital repositories that can still be found in modern urban society.
ReplyDelete